Prof. Dr. Anne Nassauer
Prof. Nassauer has received a professorship at Universität Erfurt: Website

John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies
Department of Sociology
Assistant Professor
Office hours
Vita
2016 – current
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin (Germany).
2013 – 2015
Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Sociology, Graduate School of North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin (Germany).
07/14 – 09/14
Research stay at the Department of Sociology, New York University, New York (USA).
02/12 – 06/12
Researcher in the project “Subterranean Politics in Europe” at Hertie School of Governance, Berlin (Germany).
09/10 – 05/11
Visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York (USA).
2013
PhD (summa cum laude), International Doctoral Program, Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin (Germany).
Main Research Fields
- Micro-sociology
- Violent and criminal behavior
- Crowds and social movements
- Behavioral analysis and symbolic interaction
- Emotions
- Visual data and Video Data Analysis (VideoDataAnalysis.com)
- Research Design and Social Science Methods
- Technology & research ethics
- Political Sociology
Research Projects
Current
- “Integrating a cognitive and collective behaviour perspective on behavioral contagion: developing decision models for artificial agents in VR” (SCIoI Grant with Marcel Brass, Jens Krause, and Pawel Romanczuk, HU Berlin)
- Aggressive Language, Violent Actions? A County-level Quantitative Text Analysis of Twitter Messages (with Salvatore Giorgi, Nicolas Legewie & H. Andrew Schwartz)
- An Analysis of Body-Worn Camera Footage of Officer-involved Shootings (research project as a visiting fellow at Yale University, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation)
- Rampage School Shootings in the United States
- Video Data Analysis (research project in cooperation with Nicolas Legewie, German Institute for Economic Research)
- A Human Inhibition to Violence? Studying Collins Micro-sociological Theory of Violent Confrontations in Humans and other Great Apes
Finished
- Nassauer, A. Situational Breakdowns: Protest Violence and Beyond. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Failed Interaction Rituals: Analyzing Armed Store Robberies Caught on CCTV
- An Analysis of President Trump’s Facial Expressions on Election Night
(http://sociological-eye.blogspot.de/2017/03/trumps-sad-face.html) - Methodological Approaches for Visual Data Analysis (with Nicolas Legewie, German Institute for Economic Research)
- Subterranean Politics in Germany 2011: Occupy, Anonymous, Guttenplag (with Helmut Anheier, Hertie School of Governance)
- National and Transnational Diffusion of Social Movement Tactics (with Bogdan Vasi, University of Iowa)
- Violence in Demonstrations: A Comparative Analysis of Situational Interaction Dynamics during Social Movement Protests
Awards and Recognitions
- 2021 Outstanding Recent Contribution in Social Psychology Award from the Social Psychology Section of the American Sociological Association for "Situational Breakdowns: Understanding Protest Violence and Other Surprising Outcomes" (Oxford University Press, 2019).
- Outstanding Contribution to Political Sociology 2020 Honorable Mention from the American Sociological Association's Section on Political Sociology for "Situational Breakdowns: Understanding Protest Violence and Other Surprising Outcomes" (Oxford University Press, 2019).
- 2020 Charles Horton Cooley Book Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (SSSI) for "Situational Breakdowns: Understanding Protest Violence and Other Surprising Outcomes" (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Selected Publications
Krause, Jens, Pawel Romanczuk, Emiel Cracco, William Arlidge, Anne Nassauer, and Marcel Brass (2021) “Collective Rule-Breaking.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2021.08.003.
Nassauer, Anne (2021). “Whose Streets? Our Streets! Negotiations of Space and Collective Violence” Social Problems. https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spaa051
Nassauer, A. & Nicolas M. Legewie (2020). “Violent Livestreams as Data? The 2019 Christchurch Attack Livestream as a Case Study in Research Ethics”, in Shing-Ling S. Chen and Zhoujun J. Chen, Nicolas Allaire (Eds.) “Legal and Ethical Issues of Live Streaming”. Oxford: Lexington Publishing.
Nassauer, A. & Nicolas M. Legewie (2020). Methodologische Entwicklungen in der Gewaltforschung - Videodatenanalyse, Mixed Methods und Big Data. (Methodological Developments in Violence Research - Video Data Analysis, Mixed Methods, and Big Data). Österreichische Zeitschrift für Soziologie 45:135–156.
Nassauer, A. & Nicolas M. Legewie (2020). How COVID-19 Could Help Social Science Researchers. Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World (OUPBlog).
Nassauer, A. (2019). Video surveillance footage shows how rare violence really is. Oxford University Press’s Academic Insights for the Thinking World (OUPBlog).
Nassauer, A. (2019). Situational Breakdowns: Understanding Protest Violence and other Surprising Outcomes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nassauer, A. & Legewie, N. (2019). “Analyzing 21st Century Video Data on Situational Dynamics—Issues and Challenges in Video Data Analysis” Social Sciences 8(3):100.
Nassauer, A. (2019) “Once More with Feeling: A Review of James Jasper’s ‘The Emotions of Protest’”, Soziopolis.
Nassauer, A. & Legewie, N. (2018). "YouTube, Google, Facebook: 21st Century Online Video Research and Research Ethics." Forum: Qualitative Social Research. 19:03, Art. 32.
Nassauer, A. & Legewie, N. (2018). “Video Data Analysis: A Methodological Frame for a Novel Research Trend.” Sociological Methods and Research.
Nassauer, A. (2018). “Situational Dynamics and the Emergence of Violence During Protests.” Psychology of Violence. 8(3):293-304.
Nassauer, A. & Vasi, I. B. (2018). “On Carrots and Mobs. The Transnational Diffusion of a Collective Ethical Consumption Tactic.” Acta Sociologica. 61(4): 356-373.
Nassauer, A. (2018). “How Robberies Succeed or Fail: Analyzing Crime Caught on CCTV.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. 55(1): 125-154.
Nassauer, A. (2017). “Polizei und Protest - Einsatzplanung und situative Strategien zur Gewaltvermeidung” (Police and Protest – Operation Planning and Situational Strategies to Avoid Violence), in Annelie Molapisi, Michael Neumann, Rainer Prätorius (Ed.): Die Freunde der Helfer. Polizeipolitik in unsicheren Zeiten (pp. 152-177), Frankfurt: Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft.
Nassauer, A. (2016). „Theoretische Überlegungen zur Entstehung von Gewalt in Protesten: Eine situative mechanismische Erklärung.” Berliner Journal für Soziologie. 25, 491–518.
Nassauer, A. (2016). “From Peaceful Marches to Violent Clashes: A Micro-Situational Analysis.” Social Movement Studies. 1-16.
Nassauer, A. (2015). ”Effective Crowd Policing: Empirical Insights on Avoiding Violence”, Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 38:1, 3-23.
Nassauer, A. (2015). „Developing a Micro-Situational Theory of Crowd Violence“ in Elizabeth Crespo Kebler (Ed.), Cultures, Social Bonds and the Dynamics of Violence (pp. 39-53). Oxfordshire: Inter-Disciplinary Press.
Nassauer, A. (2015). “Forward Panic and Police Riots” in Marco Gerster, Steffen Krämer, and Daniel Ziegler (Eds.), Framing Excessive Violence – Discourse and Dynamics (pp. 37-59), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nassauer, A. and Anheier, H. (2015). „The ‘Swarm Intelligence’ and Occupy: Recent Subterranean Politics in Germany“, in Kaldor, Mary and Sabine Selchow (Eds.), Subtearranean Politics in Europe (pp. 94-119), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Nassauer, A. (2012). Violence in Demonstrations: A Comparative Analysis of Situational Interaction Dynamics at Social Movement Protests. Dissertation, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.
Nassauer, A. and Labigne, A. (equal contribution). (2012). „Violence in Civil Society. Insights from the CIVICUS Civil Society Index Databases“, in Wolfgang Dörner and Regina List (Eds.), Civil Society, Conflict and Violence, London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Nassauer, A. (2010). “From Hate to Collective Violence - Research and Practical Implications.” Journal of Hate Studies, Vol. 9 (1).
Recent media appearances (Selected)
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Research featured in Wall Street Journal, article: “The Trump Organization’s Political Prosecution” June 02, 2021.
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Interview with States, Power, and Societies - ASA Political Sociology Section Newsletter, article: “Interview with Dr. Anne Nassauer, Honorable Mention Distinguished Contribution to Scholarships Award for her book „Situational Breakdowns: Understanding Protest Violence and Other Surprising Outcomes” (Oxford 2019)”, 20 December 2020.
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Interview with FiveThirtyEight, article: De-escalation Keeps Protesters And Police Safer. Departments Respond With Force Anyway. 01 June 2020.
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Interview with WIRED, article: Curfews Can Quell Violence—but Also Spark More Protests. 04 June 2020.
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Twelve books that give context to current protests [reading list], Oxford University Press Blog, discusses among other books “Situational Breakdowns: Understanding Protest Violence and Other surprising outcomes” by Anne Nassauer, 03 June 2020.
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“Order, breakdown and the dynamics of protest violence”, 45-minute live interview on my book “Situational Breakdowns: Understanding Protest Violence and Other Surprising Outcomes” (Oxford University Press, 2019) on US radio show “This is Hell”, Sept 21, 2019.
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Research featured in Commercial Appeal (USA Today Network), “Experts raise questions about police response to Frayser protest”, June 12, 2019.
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Article in Zócalo Public Square (featured in Smithsonian Online Magazine): “How Scientists Can Learn About Human Behavior From Closed-Circuit TV”, September 07, 2018.
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Interview with DIE ZEIT, article: “Vorbild Berlin?” (on protest policing and violent clashes at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany), July 12, 2017.
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Interview with FU-student magazine FURIOS, article: “Es gibt keine simple Erklärung” (“There is No Simple Explanation”, on the occurrence of rampage school shootings), July 10, 2017.
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Interview with Wall Street Journal, article: “Rating a Semi-Accidental President” (on Donald Trump’s facial expressions of sadness on election night), April 25, 2017.